Jewish journalist Damian Pachter has arrived in Israel from Argentina via Uruguay, having fled for his life after having been the first to report the death of Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman. What was first believed to have been a suicide is now known to have been the murder of the high-ranking official.

The prosecutor was investigating the possible coverup of involvement of Iranian officials in the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish community center. Eighty-five people died and more than 200 were wounded in the deadly terror attack.

Pachter, an Israeli citizen,works for the English-language Buenos Aires Herald. He said his phones were being tapped and that he believed he was being followed. “I believe my life is in danger,” he told his colleagues.

His employer said in a statement the newspaper was willing to help him in any way possible and that he had not expressed his concerns at the time.

The plot thickens in the shooting death of Argentina’s federal prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, as the first journalist to report on the case flees the country.

The investigator – who four days earlier had given a judge a report on a government deal to prevent prosecution of former Iranian officials over the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center – was shot from a distance of at least 15 centimeters (6 inches).

That’s no suicide, as government officials such as President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner initially claimed.

Forensic examination also showed the bullet wound to Nisman’s head had no exit wound – which it would have, had the gun been pressed to his skull as in a suicide.

The 10 police officers assigned to protect him have been suspended and are under investigation, according to The Associated Press. Lead investigator Viviana Fein questioned the two officers assigned to the door of Nisman’s building and will ultimately decide whether to try them, and on which charges if so.

The prosecutor was found in his bathroom Sunday night with a .22 caliber handgun next to his body – making it appear to the untrained eye as if he committed suicide – the day before he was to testify at a congressional hearing over the Jewish center bombing case.

Diego Lagomarsino spoke with authorities soon after Nisman’s death, saying he had given the .22 to the prosecutor because he wanted it for protection. He is not named as a suspect. However, justice officials say he now cannot be located. They have ordered that he be barred from leaving the country – if he hasn’t already skipped town – without first securing permission from the authorities.

Well aware of his risks, Nisman took precautions and had already handed the judge in the case his 289-page report. Nisman had alleged that President Kirchner had secretly cut a deal to prevent the prosecution of former Iranian officials who were accused of being involved in the 1994 car bombing that killed 85 people and wounded more than 200 others.

Argentina allegedly agreed to withdraw the “red notices” on Interpol seeking the arrests of former and current Iranian fugitives in the unsolved case, in exchange for exporting grain to Iran, who would pay with oil.

Initially Kirchner posted a letter on social media saying she was convinced Nisman had killed himself, but quickly reversed that stance as evidence began to flow in. Her second posting asserted that she was convinced it was no suicide.

Instead, the president wrote that Nisman’s allegations were based on “false information” given to him by the former head of intelligence services. This second letter, published Thursday, avowed that Nisman’s death was a deliberate attempt to damage the credibility of her administration.

Meanwhile, Damian Pachter, a journalist for the English-language Buenos Aires Herald, is on his way to Israel.

Pachter, who is Jewish and is an Israeli citizen, was the first to report the death of Alberto Nisman. He told several Israeli publications he was planning to seek refuge in the Jewish State.

“I left because my life was in danger. My phones were being monitored. I intend to return to Argentina when my sources tell me conditions have changed. I don’t think that will happen in the term of this government,” he told a local internet site.

His employer said in a statement the newspaper was willing to help him in any way possible and that he had not expressed his concerns at the time.

Pachter left Argentina on Saturday, according to Foro de Periodismo Argentino, the local journalism group, which added the reporter had said he was being followed on Friday and felt unsafe.

Just days before Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment on Jan. 19, 2015, he took measures to make sure his research into the Jewish Center bombing and high-level conspiracy didn’t disappear with him, according to a Makor Rishon report.

Nisman sent an email to three friends with a backup of his research and report.

It was the last email that Israeli-Argentine writer and educator, Gustavo Daniel Perednik, received from Nisman. A few days later Nisman was found with a bullet in his head.

A month before, Perednik met with Nisman in a cafe, where Nisman told him about what he was working on. Nisman told Perednik, “In case someone murders me, all the data is saved.”

The emails were sent from Nisman’s private, secure account in the prosecutor’s office.

Another recipient is believed to be Jaime Stiusso, Argentina’s former chief of counterintelligence, who was fired last year by Argentine President Cristina Kirchner.

Judicial officials in Argentina dropped a bombshell Thursday and released the 300-page file prepared by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had been murdered earlier this week, on the day before he was to deliver his testimony regarding conspiracy involving the country’s president and its (Jewish) foreign minister.

President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner immediately declared that Nisman committed suicide but reversed herself Thursday, in the face of evidence to the contrary, as well as nationwide anger at Nisman’s death.

His report accused President Kirchner of “deciding, negotiating and arranging the impunity of the Iranian fugitives in the AMIA case.” She and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman allegedly “took the criminal decision of inventing Iran’s innocence to satisfy commercial, political and geopolitical interests of the Argentine republic.”

These officials planned to get Iran off the hook in return for oil and weapons, while imaginary suspects would be fingered for the bombing,

Nisman also charged Minister Timerman with obstructing justice and had prepared to ask that his assets, worth $23 million, be frozen.

Kirchner, after flip-flopping on the suicide theory, is now trying to convince the public that Nisman was duped by people whom he wrongfully thought were intelligence agents and who gave him false information.

Kirchner is acting the part of a concerned woman who feels sorry for Nisman for being misled by people who she says were trying to act against the government, used Nisman for their own purposes, and then finished him off when they had no more use for him.

How delightful. At least she no longer believes Nisman killed himself. It’s the bad people who did it.

Earlier this week, a locksmith debunked the theory that it must have been a suicide because the bathroom door was locked. He said the service door to the late prosecutor’s apartment was closed but unlocked.

Government prosecutor Viviana Fein said that the locksmith was mistaken, insisting that the service door of Alberto Nisman’s apartment was locked when his mother and the bodyguards arrived, the Buenos Aires Herald reported.

Fein explained the different versions by pointing out that there were two locks on the service door and that Nisman’s mother had unlocked one of them before the locksmith arrived.

Argentine senator Ernesto Sanz said that if Kirchner “thinks he was killed, she needs to remove Security (Ministry) chiefs. This is very serious… If they first thought that it was a suicide and now they don’t, it is because there is someone linked to the State who convinced them of this.”

Security Secretary Sergio Berni said Nisman’s apparent murder was an “operation against the government,” according to the Herald.

“Everyone understands that this was a big operation against the government,” Berni said in a radio interview, explaining that murdering Nisman only made his complaints more serious.

In other words, if someone murdered Nisman it was not to protect Kirchner but rather to make her appear even more suspicious.

In a country where bribery and lying are part of the culture, someone has to be paid to tell the truth and not a lie. it could very well be that Iran and Hezbollah got rid of Nisman, regardless of the consequences for Timerman and Kirchner.

The most interesting, if not incredible, view on the report released by judicial officials came from Secretary to the Presidency Aníbal Fernández, who was quoted by the Herald as saying, “The complaint was not even written by Nisman.”

Among those whom Nisman fingered as being involved in the deadly bombing are Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran; Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran’s foreign minister when the AIMA Jewish center was bombed; Ali Fallahian, former chief of the Iranian intelligence ministry; Mohsen Rezai, the former director of the Revolutionary Guards; Ahmad Vahidi, former head of the Quds Force and minister of defense; Ahmad Reza Asghari, former official at the Iranian embassy; Iran’s former ambassador to Argentina, Hadi Soleimpanpour; and Mohsen Rabbani, former attaché of the Iranian embassy in Argentina.

Argentinean president leader Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said Thursday it is clear to her that prosecutor Alberto Nisman did not pull the trigger of the gun that left him dead hours before he was to deliver evidence that would exposed Iran as part of a 20-year-long conspiracy of terror,

Original reports that Nisman committed suicide in his 14th-floor apartment Sunday were immediately dismissed by most of the Western world as well as by many Argentines.

Within hours, enough questions were raised that all but proved that Nisman was murdered. Iran, Hezbollah and their Argentinean agents are the most obvious suspects.

Nisman had prepared documents and testimony to present his case before a congressional committee that the bombing of the Jewish AMIA center in 1994, which killed 85 people and hundreds were wounded, was part of a chain of executions and acts of terror funded and organized by Iran and Hezbollah.

Nisman’s murder was only the latest execution.

Several Argentinean government officials were involved in a cover-up of Iran’s involvement in the AMIA bombing, according to Nisman’s evidence.

Government spokesman Anibal Fernandez was one of the suspects.

Framing a suicide was aimed at getting rid of Nisman neatly and cleanly, leaving Iran pure and innocent.

But whoever staged the apparent suicide left open too many holes.

If Nisman shot himself, obviously at close range, why didn’t the bullet go through the other side of his head?

Why weren’t there any signs of gunpowder? Perhaps that was because a small-caliber gun was used.

But if the door to his bathroom, where he was found dead, indeed was locked, the perpetrators of the suicide story forget to lock the service door that the murderer or murderers might have used.

A locksmith said that he had no trouble standing outside the bathroom and using a wire to punish the lock inside, which would make it appear that no else could have been in the bathroom.

But besides the fact that the service door was not locked, investigators noted that entry to the bathroom could have been gained by using a narrow corridor in which the air conditioning unit was mounted.

President Kirschner wrote in a letter posted on Twitter Thursday she is “convinced” the death was not due to suicide. Considering that he worked 10 years on the case and was on the eve of triumphant testimony fingering Iran, why would he put an end to his life?

Hezbollah is threatening to take deadly revenge on Israel for Sunday’s strike on terrorists in Syria, but more significant is that Iran has admitted that one of its generals and (five or) six soldiers were killed in addition to Hezbollah’s casualties.

The IDF is on high alert for a Hezbollah attack and communities on the Golan Heights and the Upper Galilee are on a virtual war-footing.

Unlike previous attacks in Syria on missiles and other weapons destined for Hezbollah, Sunday’s raid struck Hezbollah terrorists on the ground, hitting three vehicles traveling in the Golan Heights.

As usual, Hezbollah responded with threats, especially since Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week warned that he will order an attack on Israel at some time or another.

Hezbollah has denied that its fighters are on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, but the aerial bombing on Sunday erased that lie. It said one of the dead was a leading commander, Mohammed Amed Issa, and it admitted that an Iranian also was killed.

The established presence of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Israel’s border will make it even harder for President Barack Obama to take a dovish position on the Iranian nuclear threat without Congress, as well as Israel, doing everything possible to stop an appeasement policy. J. E. Dyer wrote in The Jewish Press here on Sunday:

Syria is now uniquely important to Iran’s nuclear aspirations because of the internal turmoil. There is no meaningful mechanism for enforcing “national” Syrian accountability to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. This is an ideal situation for Iran, and is only enhanced by the fact that the Syrian nuclear program has been on the alternate path to a plutonium bomb, as opposed to Iran’s well-advanced path to a uranium bomb.

A nuclear weapon aimed at Israel is Hezbollah and Iran’s ultimate revenge.

Meanwhile, no one is discounting Hezbollah threats, but it will not have an easy time to attack Israel, especially now that it is clear that Iran is operating across the Golan Heights border.

Hezbollah has enough rockets to cripple Israel, but the price of an attack could be suicidal for the terrorist army as well as Lebanon.

It will be a lot easier and less risky if Hezbollah takes revenge by attacking Jews outside Israel.

It remains to be seen if the death of Alberto Nisman, the state prosecutor in the Hezbollah-directed bombing of the Argentine Jewish Center bombing, was a suicide, as originally suggested, or was murder.

Was it a coincidence that he was shot dead hours after Israel killed six Hezbollah commanders?